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Friday, December 24, 2010

McCain calls suicide prevention overreach and blocks bill

McCain calls suicide prevention an "overreach" and blocks bill! If all the parents out there visiting the cemetery this year for Christmas instead of sitting down with their veteran son/daughter watched this video about McCain, they would line up in front of his house and demand he resign from the Senate.
McCain told Representative Rush Holt "Don't give me a lecture" as Holt tried to explain this crisis.

John McCain blocks troop suicide prevention program

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

From MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell blog:

Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who admitted in his memoir to attempting suicide while held captive as a P.O.W. in Vietnam for 5 1/2 years, is responsible for blocking funding for a suicide prevention program aimed at military reserve troops returning home from combat.

(Reuters) - Efforts to prevent suicides among U.S. war veterans are failing, in part because distressed troops do not trust the military to help them, top military officials said on Thursday.

Poor training, a lack of coordination and an overstretched military are also factors, but a new 76-point plan lays out ways to improve this, Colonel John Bradley, chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, told a conference.

Bradley said a team of experts spent a year interviewing troops who had attempted suicide, family members and others for the report and plan, presented last month to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is due to report to Congress in 90 days.

"They tell us again and again that we are failing," Bradley told a symposium on military medicine sponsored by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation.

Each branch of the services -- the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines -- rushed to create a suicide prevention program, but there was no coordination. The report recommends that the defense secretary's office take over coordination of suicide prevention efforts.

On-the-ground prevention training often failed because those running the sessions did not understand their importance, Bradley said.

"They are mocked and they are probably harmful," he said.

According to the report, available at www.health.mil/dhb/default.cfm, 1,100 servicemen and women committed suicide in 2005 to 2009 -- one suicide every day and a half. The Army's suicide rate doubled in that time.

About 1.9 million U.S. service men and women have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Marines have reported the numbers have gone down, but they have reported drops in the past only to be followed up by another increase. While it is hopeful, it is not impressive. As you can see, we just keep losing them after they have survived combat operations but could not survive with the aftermath of combat.

Yet with these numbers, the National Guards and Reservists have a harder time surviving because when they return home, they are expected to and expect themselves to, just get back to their "normal" lives with no support system and a disconnected civilian circle surrounding them. He told Holt that "Maybe you need something like this in New Jersey, but we don't need it in Arizona." Too bad he must not read the newspaper from Tucson when they also carried the following report on this link. Civilian soldiers' suicide rate alarming

Civilian soldiers' suicide rate alarming
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
National Guard soldiers who are not on active duty killed themselves this year at nearly twice the rate of 2009, marring a year when suicides among Army soldiers on active duty appear to be leveling off, new Army statistics show.

Eighty-six non-active-duty Guard soldiers have killed themselves in the first 10 months of 2010, compared with 48 such suicides in all of 2009.

The reason for the rise in suicides among these "citizen soldiers" is not known. It may be linked to the recession, says Army Col. Chris Philbrick, deputy commander of an Army task force working to reduce suicides.

Philbrick said investigations into the suicides of soldiers not on full-time-active status have found that some were facing stressful situations such as home foreclosures, debt and the loss of a job.

Other factors have played a role in the suicides, including relationship problems, depression, substance abuse, combat stress and mild brain injuries, Philbrick says.

The rise comes as the rate of suicides leveled among full-time active-duty Army soldiers, National Guard members and reservists following years of increases, Philbrick says. Among that group, there were 132 confirmed or suspected suicides in the first 10 months of this year compared with 140 such suicides for the same period in 2009.

That positive trend among active-duty troops was more than offset by the rise in suicides among non-active-duty National Guard members.

There were 252 confirmed or suspected suicides among active and non-active Army members through October of this year. There were 242 such deaths in all of 2009.

But in all of this, to tell Holt that it is not needed in Arizona, McCain forgets that he has run his entire political life as being a veteran and a POW. He forgets that the laws and bills passed in Washington are not about one state over another but for all states which he has been a senator long enough that he should know that. These men and women are coming home from doing what he voted for them to do but he can't manage to do anything for them when they come home? How dare he be so callous? How dare he use his title of being a veteran and then turn his back on every veteran in this country? How dare the people of Arizona put him back into office over and over again when he has voted against veterans over and over again?

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Five veteran suicide rescues in a two-hour period—so John McCain blocks suicide prevention
December 22, 2010 posted by Chaplain Kathie

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) Blocks suicide prevention measure
A small crisis group gets calls all the time from veterans in crisis. Considering these men and women know what it is like to face death on a daily basis, reaching the point where all seems hopeless indicates a crisis itself, we fail to grasp how serious this is. Yet on one night this same small crisis group had to rescue 5 suicidal veterans!
read more herehttp://woundedtimes.blogspot.com/2010/12/five-veteran-suicide-rescues-in-two.html

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Crisis Phone Numbers

Vietnam Veterans of AmericaCrisis Phone Numberspecial noticeIf you are a veteran in emotional crisis and need help RIGHT NOW, call this toll-free number 1-800-273-8255, available 24/7, and tell them you are a veteran. All calls are confidential.http://www.vva.org/

Veterans’ Crisis Intervention Hotline

1-888-899-9377

A Crisis Intervention Hotline has been established by the VA Heartland Network to assist veterans who may be dealing with a mental health crisis or difficult issue in their lives. The hotline will also aid family members or friends of veterans who need help in assisting a veteran in crisis.